Comments on: Prince lashes out at YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay

Musician intends to win back control of his copyright on the Web.

[muertepullus]

Ego much?

What makes Prince think he is better than the MPAA, the Swedish Gov't, The White Stripes, Dreamworks, and everyone else who has gone against TPB? Clearly if he'd done any research on this matter he wouldn't have bothered including TPB at all and merely went at eBay and YouTube.

[moeydog]

Little Babies

Wow, what a group of whining little babies. Get a job and try
"buying" something. Mama is not going to feed you with a bottle
anymore.

If uTube posts a video of you being a whining little baby, and
makes money selling advertisements on the site as people watch
it, and laugh all the way to the bank, you wouldn't mind? You're
so sensative... I find it hard to believe.

If any of you little babies had enough talent to make money, you
might understand this issue. And "not buying his music" really
doesn't matter, because your drop in the bucket is not the point.
It's more a matter of corporate ethics than making a buck. Prince
has money, this is not about greed. It's about respect. Look it
up, it's in the dictionary.

[Blito]

If the Pirate Bay profits through ADS etc. then it's wrong

They should be paying a share of the proceeds to the media creators. Unless maybe they can prove the money only goes to the servers.

[snopromise]

nonprofit

They dont make any money. The people who run pirate bay earn a living at other jobs.

[Machaira]

ridiculous

Pirate bay is just a portal, as such they should not be responsible
for what other people bring through the portal. Its like a coffee
shop owner being held liable for someone dealing drugs out of
their store. They didn't do anything wrong, go after the guy selling
the drugs. WHy should the shop owner be expected to do the
police's job for them?

[paulbower]

YouTube is worse

I think YouTube is worse than Pirate Bay. YouTube has a copy of the music video and distributes it for free. On YouTube music search engines like www.tubejuke.com you can get a feel for the massive amount of music videos that is on there...

[PhillyBoy919]

Like The Pirate Bay...

...gives two sh*ts what Prince thinks. Who cares if a Prince video appears on YouTube, or The Pirate Bay. Does he really think that there would be people lining up to buy his videos if they weren't available for free? Legal action is not going to end piracy...not now, not ever. I don't know why people can't seem to accept that. It's like the decision NBC made to leave iTunes. If I wanted an NBC show, I was more than happy to pay my $2 to download it. Now I'll just grab a Torrent of it and get it for free. They simply are not intelligent enough to learn how to use these technologies to their advantage. Its a shame.

[e4bree]

Prince Bashers - Lack of knowledge always shows . . .

To all you Prince bashers - - If you don't like Prince, are unaware or don't appreciate his musical genius, just say so. [for details on his talent, just read some of the other entries here like ??ARE YOU GUYS FOR REAL?: reader comment from rfelgueiras.? Posted on: September 13, 2007, 1:29 PM PDT.] Your very youthful limited exposure and knowledge of the artist and the industry shows in your comments. Whether you agree with the lawsuit or not, and whether you sample new music from YouTube or not, does not change the following facts about Prince. He?s Produced and producing many other artist, plays 22 instruments, composes music that combines, transcends, and expands across many genres. Yes his music has a lot of play, but much of it has real messages too. True musicians who may not even have a natural interest or appeal to his style of music, respect and acknowledge his pure talent; as apposed to some of the more often than not fabricated~digitized ~ commercialized performers packaged to appeal to the lowest common denominator. His Large venue national and international concerts tours within the last 4 years practically all sold out within days. And yes, as rfelgueiras said- Prince was a pioneer at merchandising music via the internet. He was ahead of the curve, besides his fans, industry insiders know that in addition to napster, it was internet ventures such as his and a few others that encouraged the Big Boys, ala itunes-etc to jump in and ride the waves of the internet economy. It just humors me when a lack of knowledge (or lack of interest- which is it?), or just dislike (it's ok, to each his own. Just say so) parades as informed authority. ~~~~ just my two cents.

[tmventresca]

I don't actually think most people are disregarding his talent, because it is there. What I, and other people are saying is that this is mistreatment of fans and utterly rediculous when he can get free exposure to his talent.

[iheartbritt]

prince

he has no right to lash out at anyone

[mdstevouk]

Ok....reality check....

As a semi-pro musician myself I personally find you tube an invaluable resource for learning songs to play myself. I don't copy the content from the site in any way, but it is invaluable for finding some of those hard to find tracks to learn to play - in particular live clips for seeing finger/chord positions that you wouldn't get from any other source.

But, there is always another point of view. I've seen a lot of posts here giving Prince a blasting (your choice) and saying he has no talent (all I can say is that these people must not have any musical appreciation of musical/writing talent).

HOWEVER... consider this... put yourself in Prince's position... imagine you were a rockstar and had a dvd of videos available for purchase by fans - legal purchase - and then suddenly a site starting offering all your videos to be viewed and potentially scraped for absolutely nothing. Or... you have a back catalogue of material which again is available for legal purchase by fans..and suddenly a site starting offering your hard work for free for people to download as and when they wanted. I'd imagine that YOU would be ever so slightly P.O'd wouldn't you??? The arguement about "prince has loads of money anyway and is just being greedy" just doesn't hold water... it doesn't matter how much, or little money, Prince has...the issue is that the fruits of his labours are being ripped off for nothing. If you were in Prince's position and someone said to you "well you have loads of money anyway"...would you be very happy with that comment? I think not...

I'm not having a bang about anyone on either side of the fence as I think both parties have valid points...but I think labelling Prince as greedy is a little unfair...and labelling him as untalented proves that there must be a lot of people out there who simply don't have a pair of ears on the sides of their head!

[tmventresca]

A note to prince:

You are not as popular as you used to be. Do you not realize what kind of exposure this gets you? I am under the assumption that other artists realize this or else there would be billions of lawsuits like yours included with other EXTREMELY popular musicians. Its a case of the little kid that says "thats MY TOY" jesus christ millions of people watch these videos and hear your song. Get over yourself

And by the way, what are you going to do; get my ip and hunt me down? I got this link from google and damned proud of it! I'm sooooo scared of you coming to my house for voicing my opinion, which is in the freedom of speach act....

[Fifilabond]

Are you popular ? you great berk.
Shut up you little nobody. You utter fool!

[leobowers]

There?s only 1 Prince
I play princes songs out live, and I'm in the process of seeking a compulsory or mechanical license to record a couple. I know that he would back me when I say "Just do it the right way and give the props associated to the artist" and no prob! Oh yeah, but most importantly do the music some justice if you?re an artist don?t butcher the music! No one complains about getting more $$$ only things that cause stress like artistic butchery or less $$$ especially when you?re the one that worked your butt off to put it on the map of creativity Dig?
Leo Bowers

[Yticilef]

He must be stupid - to object, especially to Youtube. I have found out so much (for example) about Sly and the Family Stone, through Youtube, that I've bought every recording, plus a poster or two, that I can get hold of. I bought the newly remastered boxed set of CDs. And that's not all - I've become re-acquainted with all kinds of music I loved in the 60s, 70s, and beyond -- and have bought recordings.

I never liked Prince though. Now that I've seen so much of Sly, and Little Richard on Youtube, I know who Prince imitated, and he's not nearly as good. He's much too affected as well, too vain -- look at that damn photograph at the top of the page. Ridiculous. He'll never be as good as Jesse Jackson, or Sly, or Little Richard. So he can object all he wants. I was just going to look at him on Youtube, but maybe now I can't. No great loss.

[Yticilef]

And -- here's a video produced with Sly Stone and Jesse Johnson (who apparently battled for years to get out from under the shadow of Prince, but never could); showing how talented they both are, particularly Sly imho. It's probably produced by Sly, since that's what he started out as, a producer -- and is typically exuberant, danceable, and very, very tight -- just the way Sly and the Family Stone always performed. In Other Words - far better than Prince.

[Yticilef]

forgot the URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cep7LfGKIb8&feature=related
and nobody is suing - I'm sure they're happy to have people watching.

[bgrubb]

The outcome of the dancing baby lawsuit has put over zealous copyright holders like Prince on notice that ignoring Fair use can result in *them* being sued under the DMCA per section 512(f). That the RIAA has backed down to some degree indicates that they realize that the PR disaster they have created is hurting sales.

[chinamonty]

I think that everyone who has a King or a Queen as a parent should take out some sort of injunction stopping him from calling himself Prince. It is an infringement of their heredity as well as IP -he is quite simply an imposter.
I like his music but don't feel inclined to buy CD or DVD for one song when I don't like the rest.